12. Leadership

We need servant leaders. We are all a team and a family and the style of leaders should fit with that self-understanding.

Modest salaries. So people in leadership should not be paid salaries far above those of the people they lead. Wilkinson and Pickett tells by their book The Spirit Level that amongst nations with enough of the basic essentials of life the ones that work best in almost every way are the more egalitarian ones not the richest one.

So, especially leading public servants should be content to live on modest salaries that leave the team they lead feeling that they are one of them. This should apply to commerce also even though setting such an ethos is not in the direct control of the government.

Life in Britain should be such a boon that the best people want to live and work here and raise their families here because it is such a nice place to raise a family and to live and because the atmosphere gives plenty of non-financial rewards to those helping the nation to achieve its goals (public esteem, pleasant public spaces and facilities, fair justice, lovely countryside, a non-phrenetic lifestyle).

Government leaders and departments should give more than lip service to being humble leaders of a team. This should reflect itself also in government being open to the ideas and feelings of the people being led and not just in superficial things. Consultation should really meet with the people without foregone conclusions – even though I recognise that some people’s views won’t be the ones that prevail.

Working democracy. We should have styles of central, regional and local government that give people the feeling that their opinions really do matter and that government is really trying to engage with the people and not merely to give the right appearance.

And it does matter that leaders set an example in the own personal life style. People can be forgiven but ethics should be part of the lives of leading men and women.